


near the buffer in memory on the stack

by entanglement



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Multiple Pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 13:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4830977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglement/pseuds/entanglement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(post-finale)<br/>the important parts from the last 72 hours</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. pwd

"""

You're going to walk to the subway.

You're going to get on the train.

You're going to get off at your stop.

You're going to go home.

You're going to sit at your computer and watch

and enjoy

the beautiful carnage that we've all created together.

"""

 

It's not beautiful.

I remember watching over Darlene's shoulder at the computer in the kitchen of our childhood home, hunting and pecking on the keyboard as I taught her how to code. I remember how her face would scrunch up in frustration when she'd miskeyed something and found what she wrote wouldn't run. Neither of us knew back then that she'd still be scrunching up her face in that same deep, frustrated concentration as she wrote the code that would lock away nearly all the debt in the country from its collectors. That should be beautiful. That should hold some kind of satisfaction for me, but I can't feel anything but contempt as I watch the anchors on CNN pick apart the president's address for inconsistencies that mean the endtimes really are here. I feel my stomach turn as I watch the nervous experts they bring on trip over their explainations and sweat through questions that hardly have answers worth broadcasting. It's not beautiful. Everyone is fucked. At least in the protest feed, they're acknowledging that.

Money is dead money is dead money is dead...

I'm thinking of Jobs and Wozniak now. I'm thinking of the homebrew computer club and the horrifying mutations we've undergone as these machines sunk deeper and deeper into our lives. I wonder if they knew what would grow from what they'd created. I wonder if they knew they'd get rich. I wonder if, when Woz sees what we've done to the world and literally pisses on the seat in his private jet, the employee there to clean it up will trust that their paycheck will be electronically deposited into their account at the end of the week. I don't know what's worse; blissfully unaware and cleaning up piss or feeling sick over degrading yourself for something you might not even have once the humiliation is complete. That's carnage, but it's not beautiful.

Some of the protesters on the feed tip over a hot dog stand and cheer as its contents pour out into the street and I wonder if they deserve their freedom. I'm not so sure if I should even be the one that gets to decide what they deserve. Even in a freer world, I still have the feeling I'm a rat with my tail broken in a trap.

A knock at my door jolts me out of deep thought and I rise as three more knocks, faster and louder, shake the door on its hinges. I reach out and turn the padlock and pull it open. It's Mr. Robot. My dad. Whatever. At this point, I'm just baffled he's still bothering to use a door.

"Now that you're calm, do you still want to know where Tyrell Wellick is?"

I don't answer or back up to signal that he's welcome to come in, so he reaches out and gently presses a hand to my shoulder to guide me back so he can walk in and drop down ungracefully onto my sofa. I should ignore him. That's what you're supposed to do with hallucinations, I think. I should just ignore him until he gets the fucking hint that he's not welcome anymore and then just figure all of this out by myself.

"I doubt you could, Elliot," Mr. Robot says as he leans over to look into Qwerty's fishbowl.

Right. I need him. Who else is gonna help me figure it out. You?

"I told you not to bother talking to them. They're just as clueless as you are."


	2. ls -l

(70 hours ago)

My mother's favourite saying: _Allmosa är till fromma både för den som får och för den som ger._

I've tried my hardest to look American. I've tried to look like their grandparents: hard-working immigrants from dirt poor families that only came to this country to work twice as hard, because Americans love a success story. Most of them, even the wealthier ones that got just as much for free as I did, are infuriated by the concept of a handout or a refusal to assimilate, so I edited my identity to suit them. I edited the foreign tones from my voice and I tried to perfect their colloquialisms to sound just like them. I sacrificed whoever I was before I came here to be successful, but right now, when I pull the plastic mask from my face, I don't feel any more shame for it. I feel just as free as the people washed clean of debt. I hadn't realised until this very moment that I was carrying a debt too.

When he looks out from behind the camera, Elliot is smiling. It's odd to see him smile, mostly because the closest thing I've seen to a smile from him looked a lot more like a grimace as he tried to laugh off some sort of anxiety he didn't seem keen to confess to. I don't think it actually ever works for him as he constantly looks like something is writhing inside of him. Not now, though. He looks like a different man with a more sinister look to his grin, but I, polite as always, return the smile just in case whatever's inside of him decides to burst free.

"There isn't much more to do," Elliot says as he sits behind the computer to alter the audio track in the video to mask my voice. I watch him carefully, making sure he deletes the original.

"When will the video air?" I ask.

Elliot looks back at me and that grin appears once again. "Soon, Tyrell."

I rub the damp spot under my chin dry from where the condensation behind the plastic mask rolled down and gathered against my neck. Elliot watches. Usually, his eyes dart away every time my gaze challenges his, but he holds my gaze, eyes dark in the neon of the arcade and I wonder why there seems to be more than one Elliot.

"I need you to destroy some drives for me," he says.

"What about the other machines? The equipment?"

Elliot stares. Not the usual blank stare he ends up giving everyone as his brain scrambles to relay an answer to him, but a challenging one that dares me to ask the same question again. He's daring me to even begin to think the question again. His eyes move back to the computer screen in front of him.

"They're in the bin by the popcorn machine. Drill's in there too."

Even though I've never held a power drill in my life, I find that I'm drilling holes into hard drive platters a minute later.


	3. chmod

"I know where Tyrell Wellick is," I murmur quietly into the phone. Tyrell obviously can't hear me, but all of this is falling into place way too easily for it to continue to be easy.

  
Jesus. I'm starting to tell stories like Elliot. He always starts in the middle. Let me begin again.


	4. !!

"We need to pick up two packages," I say as I drop a small plastic bag with a fake ID and safe deposit box key into Tyrell's hand. 

"What are in the packages?" Tyrell asks.

"No idea. That's why we have to pick them up," I say.

"You said you're working alone."

"I'm flattered that you think I speak Mandarin. The Chinese data center. Remember?"

The reminder seems to assuage Tyrell's doubts. Well, at least it does for now. We're inside of his SUV, sitting across the street from a Wells Fargo branch and an Evil Corp Bank branch. Tyrell stares across towards the banks, then down to the bag in his hand and then back up towards the banks as he considers my bullshit answer again. He's probably thinking of the security cameras that are inside. He's probably thinking of how his face will be on the news soon now that they've undoubtedly secured an arrest warrant for the murder he's responsible for.

"Won't they recognize me? From E Corp?" is what he actually asks. Vain little fucker.

"I doubt it, Tyrell."

We both set off towards our destinations, but once I'm inside, I use my ATM card to pull twenty bucks and wander back out. Normal transaction. When they see me on the cameras, they won't think anything of it. I return to the car and from the front seat with the keys in the ignition, I call the cops. It's not long before I'm watching them lead Tyrell out of the bank and into a squad car and I wonder if he actually made it to the box to find it empty before the cops arrived. I hope so. It's strangely satisfying that he may know he's been betrayed.

 

-

 

On the train to the party, I think of Roger Duronio and the beat up hard drive in Elliot's backpack.

"Roger cost the investment bank he was working for three million dollars when he left a logic bomb on their systems after getting fired. He was just pissed off because they fired him, but even if his intentions were lame, he was pretty fucking good that day," I say with a low chuckle.

Elliot just stares. He does that a lot.

"Disgruntled employee. It's a rough story to write for Ty too, because he's already gonna have a huge following after this that'll sympathize with it. It feels victimless. Thankfully, he killed that woman. Lucky us, huh?"

 

Elliot still doesn't say anything, so I give him a strong pat on the back, hoping the action will burrow down deep to wherever Elliot is and reassure him in least a small way. When it gets to our stop, I have to reach out and take his hand and pull him out onto the platform like he's a little boy again. Doesn't matter. When I let go of his hand, he drifts behind me towards the arcade, his wide eyes empty. I turn him around and pull the hard drive from his backpack once we're close and he gives me a heartbreakingly confused look.

 

"What are we doing, dad?" he asks.

 

"We're protecting ourselves, son," I reply.

Inside of the arcade, it's already packed enough that even though Darlene is looking out into the crowd from the other side of the room, she can't see us. I elbow my way through just far enough in that I can drop the drive on the floor and slide it to the back of the wall underneath the skeeball machines with my shoe and then slip back out with Elliot trailing behind, still looking utterly lost.

 

Tyrell's SUV is still there when we get back and surprisingly, the key is still in the ignition. Who says people aren't honest these days? I chuckle to myself as I reach out to turn the ignition, but I feel Elliot's hands reach out and circle my throat. It's awkward, but it's effective and my vision soon starts to cloud and then fade as Elliot slides in behind the wheel again.

.  
.  
.

.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wake up in an SUV. Tyrell's SUV. How did I get here? Where's Tyrell?


	5. su

Another favourite: _Allting går igen._

I really should've realised it sooner. It would've been a bit more helpful to know before I ended up in the back seat of a police car with a zip tie around my wrists but I suppose I'd become a little too American. Stupid and gullible. There was nothing in the safe deposit box. Elliot knew they were looking for me. I wonder what else he's done, but anger obscures any chance of actually thinking this out and coming up with a way to get myself out of this.

That's when the universe or whatever is in charge of it remembers that I'm not like these people and offers me a second chance.

One of the fsociety protesters carrying a sign that says, ironically, "FUCK THE POLICE" in one hand and a bottle of whatever he's drunk from in the other, wanders out into the street and the cop in the driver's seat, swerves to miss him. The passenger side wheels ramp over a pile of garbage at the curb and the car tips, shattering the windows and dropping me against the car's ceiling. I hear shouting. Cheering. I look ahead to the cop in the front seat and blood is pouring from a gash along his scalp and collecting in a thick puddle underneath him that looks black in the dim streetlights and I dry heave once at the sight of it before I can push through the broken glass and out from the window. The protesters cheering me on pull me the last bit of the way from the car and cut my wrists free, not even knowing why the police had me in custody. They're just celebrating any bit of freedom they come across in the world.

I immediately turn and head off towards Elliot's apartment. I don't bother to thank them or anyone or anything else. This is just the universe correcting itself.


	6. shutdown -r now

(now)

 

So there it is. I framed someone for what I've done. This can't fucking be possible. It's not enough. They'll need something more than some fingerprints on a hard drive to actually accuse him of what we've done.

"Will they?" Mr. Robot chimes in, pushing himself up from the sofa to pace my apartment. "Tyrell's a fucking fantastic scapegoat. He's got the knowledge, Evil Corp fired him, he's emotional and he's not fucking American facing a charge that some- fuck, MOST of the people in this country will equate with treason. The judge is gonna practically come in their pants finding him guilty."

"No. It can't be that easy."

"That's the thing about creating your own narrative, kiddo. Life comes with a deus ex machina once in awhile. People pray for it. That's why there's the 'deus' in there."

Do you think Tyrell deserves this? I know you do. He killed that woman and came to me to fucking brag about how powerful it felt and now he's probably sitting in a jail cell. If he's not going to have remorse for that, maybe he deserves the punishment for something else. He does deserve it. He-

"You gonna get that?" Mr. Robot asks, nodding towards the door. "Seriously, they can't help you anymore. In fact, I think they enjoy watching you squirm."

I look at the door as three knocks, fast and loud, shake the door on its hinges.


End file.
